What do you do if you raise your garage door using the opener, but when it’s time to put it back down, it refuses to budge? If you’re headed out for a day at work, you obviously don’t want to leave everything wide open so that thieves can steal whatever you’ve got stored. Maybe you have someone you can call for help, but an even better solution would be to learn what to do before you ever have the problem. By following the steps outlined in this article, you can fix the problem yourself. It’s all in knowing what to look for.
The likely culprit, if you have a door opener which was produced after January 1, 1993, lies in the mandatory safety sensor auto reversing system. Take a look at your door to locate the two sensors. You’ll find them about 4-6″ from the floor of the garage. They have been put there to safeguard the closing How To Paint A Wooden Garage Door of the door so that it can’t shut down and injure someone who is in its path. If the sensors are not working properly, your opener light may flash repeatedly, and the door will not close when you tell it to. Instead, you will need to close it manually using steady pressure on the wall-mounted button.
There are some things you can do as preventive maintenance prior to having issues with your door not closing. Make sure that you keep all debris cleared away from the eyes of your sensors. They will not work properly if such items as dirt, leaves, Precision Garage Door Showroom or trash are obscuring the lens. You can also make sure that both sensors have an indicator light which gives off a steady glow. If both of them are glowing or one of them flickers, it’s possible that they may be a bit out of alignment.
The two sensors serve different functions. One of them receives information from the other via a beam. To check and see if misalignment is the problem, block the sensors so that they aren’t able to “see” each other. When this is done, the light on one of the sensors will shut down for a short period of time. That tells you that this is the receiving sensor. Loosen the bracket on the back of the receiver, and you’ll be able to adjust it so the light gives off a steady glow which tells you the sensor is back where it should be. If this simple fix doesn’t correct your problem, you may have a loose wire or a short in the system. For most of us, this means calling in a professional to find the short and fix the connection.
